Friday, February 24, 2012

Natalie Dykstra, Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking LifeA recent biography of Clover Hooper Adams (1843-85), photographer and wife of Henry Adams (1838 –1918), describes the tragic story of a complicated and fascinating woman, her "inadequately" educated husband and a slice of the 19th century political scene in Washington D.C.

The only remaining likeness of Adams is a small equestrian snapshot. After her suicide by photographic chemical potassium cyanide, Henry Adams burned all her photographs. Adams is best know for his personal intellectual biography, The Education of Henry Adams which describes the failure of his education to adequately prepare him for the industrial and technological changes of the late 19th century. From details of Clover's life, it seems he was emotionally ignorant and compassionless. Poor Clover!

A selection of Clover Hooper Adams photographs can be seen in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Her grave is marked by the famous St. Gaudens sculpture.

In Mike Ware's essay, Alternative Printing a Conspectus, he discusses obscure as well as traditional processes. His scholarship is apparent when he describes the most intriguing processes "recorded by C.M.Archer as an 'Anecdote History of Photography' inRecreative Science: a record and remembrancer of intellectual observation,Vols 1 and 2. (London: Groombridge and Sons, 1860/1)."Many of these are natural and miraculous phenomena. For example, a Retinotype

It has been concluded by doctors in America, that the last image formed on the retina of the eye of a dying person remains impressed upon it like the image on a photograph, and that if the last object seen by a murdered person was his murderer, the portrait drawn upon the eye would remain a fearful witness in death to detect him and lead to his conviction. Dr. Sandford, of New York, reports that he examined the eye of a murdered man at Auburn by means of the microscope, and found impressed on the retina the rude, worn away figure of a man, supposed to be the assassin!

After seeing our installation at the Portrait Society show, Debra Brehmer mentioned that there is a long history of eye portraiture. An exhibition at the Birmingham Museum of Art further informs on the portrait phenomenon of....“lover’s eyes,” hand-painted miniatures of single human eyes set in jewelry and given as tokens of affection or remembrance. In 1785, when the Prince of Wales secretly proposed to Mrs. Maria Fitzherbert with a miniature of his own eye, he inspired an aristocratic fad for exchanging eye portraits mounted in a wide variety of settings including brooches, rings, lockets, and toothpick cases.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken in Chicago by William Shaw in 1859

In the spirit of portraiture, we look into Abraham Lincoln's soul when we read his favorite poem,Mortality, by William Knox. As described by John Miller in the Wall Street Journal, Lincoln's mother died during his childhood and his most beloved were taken from him by their premature deaths, he must have found the verse consoling. Knox's poem is at best a "simple emotional tonic," but the lines below resonate with the wisdom of David Lochman, another Springfield, Illinois native, as well as ideas in Annie Dillard's in For The Time Being.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Lee Bontecou 's 2010 Retrospective Exhibition, All Freedom in Every Sense, is a spectacular example of change and evolution. Her work becomes more complicated and more three-dimensional. Throughout her career she has used cosmic imagery, from black holes to planetary formations.